loves die and we know thee immortal
by Odainath
Summary: pre-twilight. He wonders why her fiance prefers this giggling caricature rather than the mind he can read that recites Dante Alighieri verbatim.


**Loves die and we know thee immortal  
**pre-twilight; rosalie, edward  
"_I asked you to dance once." / "I remember."_

* * *

**o mystical rose of the mire.**

Rosalie Hale leans her hip against the table, ignoring the whispers that surround her, and looks out to the crowd. Couples dance, twirling and spinning, and she lets out a low sigh.

"Miss Hale?"

She starts, spills the champagne she'd been holding and turns in the direction of the voice. Immediately, her lip curls in distaste, and she looks at the proffered hand of Edward like she would an insect.

"Mr Cullen," she responds smoothly, watching as he lets his hand fall.

"Would you care to dance?" he asks, sounding unsure.

Rosalie arches an eyebrow. "Not particularly."

She holds his gaze a moment longer before walking away to find Royce, and soon her false laugh reaches his sensitive ears. Edward, rather than be offended, is amused, unused to women not falling for his charms; liking that this woman is.

(Though he also wonders why her fiance prefers this giggling caricature rather than the mind he can read that recites Dante Alighieri verbatim.)

-o-

**men touch them and change in a trace, the lilies and languors of virtue for the raptures and roses of vice.**

"_Show him what you look like, Rose!"_

They say that your life flashes before your eyes as you die, and Rosalie has to agree as she is flung to the ground, held down as her clothes are torn from her body. She can hear the expensive material ripping, wonders what her mother would say. The thought of her mother leads her to think of her two younger brothers; thankfully innocent. Hopefully, they won't be told _how _their older sister died, perhaps her parents would put the blame down to an automobile.

She wonders how her father will react; grief surely, for a time, but then how will they rise up the social ladder? Her beauty was the key, without it they are all-but-certain to remain lower middle-class.

The irony is not lost on her.

"_You'll have to find a new bride, Roycey-boy!"_

She turns her head, retches, and bile rises in her throat, spilling from her lips. She can hear Royce and his friends down the street, but waits until their footsteps have faded in the distance before raising her arm and wiping her face with her tattered sleeve.

She might be dying, but she'll be damned if they take all of her dignity.

Her limbs feel heavy and she closes her eyes, welcoming the cold that seeps into her skin. Anything to numb the pain.

"Oh, my-"

She opens her eyes as much as she is able, sees Carlisle Cullen crouched above her, his hands touching her face. His touch is cold, freezing even, and she winces as he pushes down slightly on her cheek. The bone is broken, that much she can tell, and she flinches. A moment later, her eyes close and she feels herself being lifted up.

A second later, she is flying and one thought remains.

_Finally._

-o-

**the white wealth of thy body made whiter, by the blushes of amorous blows.**

Some blood is sweeter than others, and Carlisle is drawn to the blood pool spreading from beneath Rosalie Hale. She twists as he approaches, shielding herself from further blows, and he crouches down and brushes sticky hair back from her forehead, whispering words of comfort.

Her back arches, scarlet liquid trickles from her mouth, and he gathers her in his arms, ignoring his instincts which tell him to kill this girl (for she could only be called a girl) and satiate his three hundred years longing for human blood. Instead, he lays her on a bed, cringing as she lunges out (her nails graze meaninglessly across his marble cheek) one final act of defiance before she falls limp.

"Carlisle?"

Esme's voice is soft and her hand flies to her mouth at the sight of the dying and broken girl.

"What happened?" she whispers, standing alongside.

"I found her on the street," he says. "It's too much waste?"

What should be a statement is a question and Esme nods, watching silently as Carlisle moves forward and hovers over the girl, his mouth inches away from her exposed neck. She can well remember the agony of the venom coursing through her veins, knowings this will be hell on earth (figuratively speaking) for Rosalie.

A moment later, the screams begin and Carlisle moves past Esme and into the bathroom, washing the blood from his mouth.

"What now?" she asks, when he reappears.

"We can only wait."

-o-

Edward knows something is amiss even before he steps inside the house. He can smell blood (oh, so sweet) on the pavement, seeping into the paved road, trickling down the gutter.

"Carlisle?" he calls as he walks up the winding staircase.

No answer, only an unearthly shriek of a women he knows, but surely not... He breaks into a sprint and stops short beside Esme who stands, arms folded. _Rosalie Hale._ Recognition floods through him and he looks to Carlisle who holds her hand.

"Rosalie Hale?" he says, voice sneering (he feels a sharp spike of irritation from the blonde - g_ood for when she will want revenge, _he thinks a moment later. For there is no doubt in his mind that she will want revenge.) "What were you thinking, Carlisle?"

"It was too much waste," Carlisle whispers, soft even for a vampire, reaching out a placing his palm flat against her forehead. "Too much waste."

Images flood Edward's mind, Carlisle's memories, and he sees Rosalie's broken body in the street, her pale skin turning blue in the cold. He sees Royce and his drunken friends, one wiping bloody hands on his trousers, laughing and telling Royce he would have to find a new bride. Royce's slurred response of 'I'll have to find some patience first.'

"I know," Edward says. "But people die all the time. Don't you think she's just a little... recognisable now?"

That statement is particularly true at this moment in time. Bruised and blood-covered skin, hair tangled, clothes ripped; she looks nothing like the coiffed and perfect woman she usually resembles.

"The Kings will have put up a huge search – not that anyone suspects the fiend," Edward continues, his teeth clenching as he thought of the drunken lout in Carlisle's memories, the man he had seen in the street, at parties, always thinking lewd thoughts. "What are we going to do with her?"

Carlisle shrugs, tracing small circles on the back of Rosalie's hand. "That's up the her, of course. She may want to go her own way."

Rosalie arches upward, the sound of her back cracking reverberating in the quiet room, and her eyes fly open. She is on her feet in an instant, the wrought-iron bed a physical barrier between them, and her eyes snap from Carlisle, to Edward, to Esme, silently demanding an explanation.

Edward steps forward and her lips curl back in a snarl and she crouches forward, ready to spring. He stops still, knowing her strength far surpasses his own and that she could tear him to bits if she were so inclined.

"It's all true," he says instead.

Her eyes widen, then fall to the window Esme had left ajar. He listens to her mind, and leaps at the same instant as she, tackling to the ground to prevent her from jumping.

"No," he says, holding her hands above her head. "You-"

He finds himself colliding with the far wall, plaster and wood falling about him. Woozy (even a vampire can get disorientated) his vision is blurry as Rosalie rips down the curtains. Sunlight hits her skin and she glows, white-hot, almost as searing as her blood-red eyes. She raises her hand, watching how it shines like small diamonds, and he distinctly hears the words; _unnatural, denied a real death, parent's worry_ in the space of a second.

"None of you are lying, are you?" she asks smoothly (her voice rings like church bells.)

She turns, and blood-red meet the sweet amber of Carlisle's eyes. Her gaze is accusatory and his head falls, a hanged man on display for all to see.

-o-

**by the hunger of change and emotion, by the thirst of unbearable things.**

They keep her inside, deeming it best, and Edward is grudgingly impressed that, unlike he himself had, she makes no attempt to get outside and hunt the nearest person she can find. Instead, she sits cross-legged in her bedroom, and cups of animal blood are placed in front of her, always in the finest china (she always has been materialistic.)

Afterward, she washes the cup in the sink, removing any lingering trace of blood and sits the cup(s) in the hall.

It's a simple affair, one made easier by Carlisle's want not to press her, to let her make her own decisions. Edward, of course, knows different, knows that she is planning revenge (she would hate to know how predictable she can sometimes be.) He leans against the door frame, watching her closely, how she seems to glow even in the artificial light of the fluorescent light above.

"What?" she demands, not turning around.

"I know what you're thinking."

Instantly, his mind is flooded with imagines of Royce, of John, of the three other men and he winces. Rosalie smirks and looks up at the ceiling.

"Don't like what you see?" she says callously.

Edward swallows, hating that she is able to play him so.

"Stop!" he exclaims, watching Royce tear her blouse.

Abruptly, she thinks instead of her younger brothers, of playing 'house' and he breathes a sign of relief.

"Does ickle Edward feel better now?" she mocks, finally turning her head.

He spins on his heel and stalks down the hallway.

-o-

She is able to get beneath his skin like no one else before. Teasing, goading until he snaps and leaves the room, her laughter close behind. Soon, however, he realises its a game and tries a different approach, appealing to her academic streak.

"_On the vermilion and the yellow flowerets..."  
_"_... she turned towards me, not in otherwise; than maiden who her modern eyes cast down."_

He scowls as he checks her answer against the text and she chuckles.

"Don't feel so bad. I memorised Dante a long time ago."

He snaps the book shut, goes to the shelf and withdraws another book.

"What's your Shakespeare like?" he asks, flicking to a random page.

"A little rusty."

He flashes her a quick smile. "We'll see."

-o-

**bite hard, lest remembrance come after.**

"You really should knock, Edward. It's awfully rude to just walk into a lady's bedroom."

"Funny," he retorts. "I don't see any 'ladies' here."

Rosalie laughs and he looks from her face to the piano wire she holds in her hands. He watches as she wraps one end around each hand until she raises it aloft; a thin, deadly (especially in a vampire's hands) weapon.

"You're really doing this?" he says as she loosens then tautens the wire, checking its strength.

She raises an eyebrow, shoots him a pitiful look.

"Did you really expect me not to?"

-o-

She walks down the hallway, her ears sensitive to any noise, and slips into the shadows as a maid walks past. John Fitzpatrick lies sleeping in the next room and she opens the door quietly, watching him breathe. In the moonlight he looks innocuous, not like a man who had raped, beaten and left a girl to die.

_Funny, _she thinks, _how deceiving appearances can be._

She approaches quickly and crouches down, blowing a breath over his skin. His hair ruffles and he gives a tired moan though doesn't open his eyes. She blows again and he swats his hand, colliding with hard marble. His brow furrows and finally, _finally_, he opens his eyes. Immediately, his lips form an 'o' and Rosalie clamps her hand over his mouth.

"Shh, shh," she croons (it sounds almost like a lullaby,) "this will be over with very quickly."

His eyes are bulging and she runs a finger along his cheek, giving a cruel smirk when she smells urine.

"Scared, are we?" she whispers.

He nods furiously.

"I would be too."

A fraction of a second later, the piano wire is around his neck and she pulls hard, severing his windpipe. He gasps for air and she rests back onto her heels, watching as he clutches at his throat. Slowly, his body stops thrashing and his limbs slacken until she knows he is dead.

(Nevertheless, she checks his pulse, not wanting to make the same mistake he did.)

-o-

The next three follow over the next fortnight. No one in the house mentions the deaths, mentions that she has become a murderer, for which she is grateful. Not that any of them (with the exception of Carlisle) could reprimand her for her actions. Esme and Edward had given in to their thirst, to their primal desires. She on the other hand... she has a reason to be here, in the King manor.

She walks with purpose, her stolen shoes clicking against the floor, her eyes falling on the two armed men at the door. They jump to their feet, useless human eyes unable to see her until she grabs them in turn and snaps their necks. Her veins flood with imagined adrenaline and she pushes open the door with one hand, breaking it clean from its hinges.

An unearthly scream reaches her ears and her eyes fall on the cowering form of Royce. He holds a broken bottle in his hand and she gives a tinkling laugh.

"Don't come any closer!"

"Do you really think you can stop me?"

The question is rhetorical and she is at his side in a moment, taking the bottle from his hand and hurling it against the opposite wall where it shatters into pieces. Royce is sobbing now as she drags him to his feet.

He looks at her, tears in his eyes. "Rose, I'm so sorry-"

He doesn't finish his sentence as Rosalie's fist collides with his face, the bones crunching beneath her knuckles. Royce staggers (she hadn't hit him very hard) and she takes out the piano wire she'd hidden beneath her elbow-length gloves.

"I'm not interested in excuses."

Again, she pulls him to his feet, then wraps the piano wire around his neck.

"No, please, Rose!"

She gives a harsh laugh as she whispers in his ear.

"This is what you've made me."

-o-

**thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses, with music that scares the profane.**

She, like most young ladies, learned the piano and Edward listens from the other room as she plays.

"Let me guess, you play?"

He grits his teeth and walks into the piano room, trying to look as if he hadn't been eaves-dropping. Predictably, Rosalie sees straight through this, but says nothing as her fingers skip over the keys.

"Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata?" he says, no small amount of admiration in his voice. "A difficult piece."

She shrugs her shoulders and finishes with a flourish.

"I was forced to play," she explains, twisting on the stool to face him. "I didn't get any enjoyment out of playing until... until now to be honest."

He nods and he gestures for her to move along the stool and sits alongside, resting his hands on the keys.

"What's your 'Debussy' like?" he asks with a smile.

She laughs.

"Let's see."

-o-

They go hunting together (not chaperoned by Carlisle or Esme; the former feeling foolish that he'd ever thought Rosalie would not be able to resist human blood. ) She was, if anything, a master at self-control, something only cemented by her change. Growing up in a household where it was presumed she would, as a result of her marriage, become the breadwinner so to speak. It was easy to forget exactly how much Rosalie had put herself through, whether she realised it or not. Piano lessons she hated; corsets tightened until she could barely breathe, sparse amounts of food, forced to hide her considerable intelligence.

"Here is a good place."

He is jolted from his thoughts by Rosalie's voice and he finds they are at the outskirts of a field. Deer graze the grounds and she points to the one nearest.

"I'll take that one," she says, already preparing to jump.

He nods and turns his attention to another deer, fifteen-or-so feet away.

-o-

**pain melted in tears and was pleasure, death tingled with blood and was life.**

They sit in the living room, listening to Bach (neither saying what they both knew; that they could play it better) on the phonograph and reading. She had 'The Grapes of Wrath' open on her lap while he read Hemingway's 'To Have and Have Not.'

"You know, I asked you to dance once," he says suddenly, closing the book with a 'snap.'

Rosalie looks up and nods. "I remember, I was awful," she admits.

He rises to his feet and crosses the room, holding out his hand.

"Make it up to me?"

After a pause, she nods, and he pulls her to her feet. Slowly (he doesn't want to startle her) he reaches around to rest one hand at the small of her back, holding her hand with his other.

"This isn't the best music," she points out, placing her hand on his shoulder.

He shrugs. "We'll make do."

-o-

**End**_._

_

* * *

_

__

**Notes**: no copyright infringement intended. Quotes taken from 'The Divine Comedy' by Dante Alighieri's. Title and sub-titles taken from 'Dolores' (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs) by Algernon Charles Swinburne.


End file.
